CULT 320: Globalization and Culture

Kara Heitz, 10/28/2014

“The university is a critical institution or it is nothing”- Stuart Hall

"There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the 'practice of freedom', the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

—Richard Shaull

“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.”

- bell hooks

Questions:• What are some of the recent trends in higher education in the

U.S. discussed in the readings (for example, tuition costs, student loans, faculty jobs, administrative costs, role of corporations, etc.)? How do these trends impact you?

• How do changes in universities and colleges discussed in the readings relate to neoliberalism? What is meant by the “neoliberalization” and “WalMart-ization” of the university?

• What does Giroux believe is this purpose of higher education? Why should people get college degrees according to him? Why are you getting a college degree?

Individual Writing Exercise

• What are some of the reason that people go to college?

• Why are you getting a college degree?• What should be the purpose of college?

Recent Trends in Higher Education

• Rising costs of college• Massive student debt• Casualization of faculty• Significant state funding cuts• Rising administrative costs

US Average GMU (%) GMU (#s)2783

Full-time 50% 44% 1226Part-time 50% 56% 1557

Tentured or tenure-track 24% 32.5% 903Contingent (includes GAs) 76% 67.5% 1880

Full-time; tenured or tenure track 32% 898Full-time; contingent 12% 328Part-time; tenured or tenure-track < 1% 5Part time; contingent (includes GAs) 56.0% 1552

FACULTY CATEGORIES IN U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (2012-2013)

Average Full-Time Faculty Salaries in the U.S. (2012-2013)

• All full-time professors, instructors, lecturers (average)

• All institutions - $84,303

• Private institutions - $99, 771

• Public institutions - $80, 578

http://chronicle.com/article/2013-14-AAUP-Faculty-Salary/145679/#id=table

Average Adjunct Pay

• Adjunct Averages across U.S. (2012-2013):• $2700 per class (3 credit hours)• ~$25,000 per year (27 credit hours)

• GMU (2014): $2511-$3948 per class

• NVCC (2013): $1869-$2715 per class

“… higher education, in its search for funding, has adopted the organizational trappings of medium-sized or large corporations. University presidents are now viewed as CEOs, faculty as entrepreneurs, and students as consumers. In some universities, college deans are shifting their focus beyond the campus in order to take on … fund-raising, strategic planning, and partner-seeking duties … Academic leadership is now defined in part through the ability to partner with corporate donors. In fact, deans are increasingly viewed as the heads of complex businesses, and their job performance is rated according to their fundraising capacity” (Giroux, pg. 59)

“The corporatization of schooling and the commodification of knowledge over the last few decades have done more than make universities into adjuncts of corporate power. Hey have produced a culture of critical illiteracy and further undermined the conditions necessary to enable students to become truly engaged, political agents. The value of knowledge is now linked to a crude instrumentalism, and the only mode of education that seems to matter is that which enthusiastically endorses learning marketable skills, embracing a survival-of-the-fittest ethic, and defining the good life solely through accumulation and disposal of the latest consumer goods. Academic knowledge has been stripped of its value as a social good. To be relevant, and therefore adequately funded, knowledge has to justify itself in markets terms or simply perish” (Giroux, 69)

Neoliberalism & Higher Education• Instrument view of education

– State: workforce development, economic growth, global competitiveness– Individual: job training, make money

• The university operating as a corporation– More decision-making power to “management” (administrators)– Students as consumers/customers– Emphasis on fundraising (esp. wealthy individual and corporate donations)– High administrative salaries

• Cut costs in areas not central to this mission (“austerity”)– Massive across the board cuts– Less money on instruction & faculty– Cuts to “non-essential” departments (esp. humanities)– Fewer scholarships, esp. need-based

What should be the purpose of higher education?

• University’s role in democracy?

• Critical citizenship

• Critical pedagogy